Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

I live in Seattle now, am married, and have an infant. I find Seattle not friendly towards families at all. The going rate for a daycare here is 3.5k per month for an infant. My wife and I are both ~7%ers? individually and we can barely afford our home (a tall skinny townhouse with no yard) and the cost of 1 baby. Having a family is hard here... Also, I don't find Seattle safe for infants and toddlers, or anybody really..

What big tech wants are people who are willing to give up everything for the dream of making money, and that's what they got.

Edit: Our life is pretty good in any case. I would never let my kid go outside and play unsupervised in Seattle even tho I myself did this as a kid in my home town (the safety I was mentioning).

There's hardly any place which is really "friendly" towards professional families with infants. For safety reasons, daycare centers have to maintain staffing ratios so it's always going to be extremely expensive (unless you're poor enough to qualify for subsidies).

As for safety, for some reason those big tech employees keep voting for progressive politicians whose failed policies have ruined their cities. I guess voters are getting what they want?

1. Seattle is quite safe. Friendliness is different than safety

2. It all comes back to housing density/supply. As you say, daycare costs are dominated by staffing ratios/wages - which are a function of cost of living. The surge of high income earners + housing supply deficit = pricing out daycare workers (and daycares).

The required staffing at daycare isn't driven by "crime safety" but an overprotective sense of protecting kids from themselves and each other. These are the required ratios. As low as 1:4 for < 1.

https://www.childcare.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/Washingto...